Solid state lighting uses several approaches to produce white light. The color mixing approach combines the red, green and blue emissions from three monochromatic LEDs to produce white light. Since each monochromatic LED light source can have high internal quantum efficiency, such a device could generate white light at a relatively high lumens per watt. However, the space needed for three LEDs can be burdensome and the packaging to place them together is cumbersome. The wavelength conversion approach uses ultraviolet (UV) emitting LEDs to generate UV light (generally from about 380 nm to about 420 nm) which is then converted to white light using a triblend phosphor system that is excited by the UV light. This is similar to the way white light is produced in known Hg-discharge fluorescent lamps. However, most conventional photoluminescent phosphors are optimized for excitation by the 254 nm radiation emitted by mercury discharges and not the longer wavelength UV radiation of LEDs. Additional work remains to develop a full range of phosphors for use with UV-emitting LEDs. The third approach is a hybrid in which a blue emission is provided by a GaInN LED and part of the blue emission is converted to a complementary emission by a phosphor. White light sources based on this design have been developed using a broad band emitter, in particular, cerium-activated yttrium aluminum garnet, Y3Al5O12:Ce3+ (YAG:Ce3+). This design avoids the large Stokes shift associated with a higher energy UV photon at 380 nm being converted to a visible photon. A similar design has been proposed which uses a second semiconducting layer, known as passive layer, that partly converts the emission from InGaN at 450 nm to a red photon near 620 nm with a InGaP alloy. This is essentially a double heterojunction structure with InGaN as the active layer and InGaP as the passive layer; InGaP acts as a phosphor.
Phosphors in lighting devices present various engineering problems, such as lack of stability, degradation in the epoxy dome, coating uniformity, and scattering of visible light, all of which can be avoided if the lighting device does not include phosphors. As used, herein the term phosphor refers to photoluminescent materials, i.e., materials that convert photons of one energy to photons of a different energy.